


There's Just Two Of Us Left (And There Always Will Be)

by The_Hunter_Nightingale



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, F/F, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-09-24 10:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20357038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Hunter_Nightingale/pseuds/The_Hunter_Nightingale
Summary: Byleth and Sothis, one and the same, bound together for eternity and beyond by Fate's decree and a promise made with a ring and the first true smile Byleth had ever made.Sothis just wants to see that smile again.





	1. A Prelude To Awaken

**Author's Note:**

> If there are mistakes I'm sorry I A: haven't actually played FE3H and am just going off of the S Support conversation with Sothis and what I've seen while watching friends play it and B: I'm typing on my phone.

_'How will I save the world if it's already destroyed?'_

The Goddess Tower, empty and crumbled as it was now, still stood tall despite the years of unkindness dealt to it. The bricks, once resplendent with the reflection of glory and righteousness it was seen as, were nought more than dust and crumbling half-cuboids of faded grey: glory long forgotten, as all things are to time. Ravaged by an age of peace and war repeating, over and over until blood could not be shed anymore, and shaken by the sounds of screaming that rang throughout the bricks still somewhat whole. 

_'How will I save something physically unable to be saved?'_

Yet not all that rested where the school once did is rubble and dust. Not all that resided within the now ruined Goddess Tower was as time-wasted and ravaged as the building itself.

For Byleth sat, a hand holding a small book to her face under orange candlelight, and where Byleth was Sothis was too. For they were bound.

"You have been searching all this time, yet the answer has not come to you?" Sothis, as small as she could be, could fix an imposing figure when necessary. She could glare into a soul and grant a fear deeper than that for god. It is beyond the point that Byleth was the only one that could see Sothis, and her wife had long learnt to ignore it.

Her question, to the slight annoyance of Sothis, was ignored in favour of Byleth flipping the page. Emerald eyes that Sothis gazed into on many an occasional flittered across dusted pages with almost fanatic speeds.

Byleth was getting desperate: had been for a while now.

Sothis would not admit to her desperation either; she did not need to, for Byleth knew of it, as Sothis knew of Byleth's.With a sigh Sothis picked up the next book in line to be read by Byleth, the title '_Theoretical Applications Of Time Travel'_ making her chuckle as she opened the first page. 

_'If only the author knew just what I was capable of back then...'_

Byleth lifted a thin azure eyebrow at the chuckle, but left her 'other half' be to read. Seeing as they'd both been around for longer than they could even remember, and memories of her time as a professor were dwindling fast, Byleth felt letting Sothis find amusement in a book was tolerable at worst.

She did not want to spoil the atmosphere of peaceful silence with her macabre thoughts and dark feelings. Shaking her head, she looked down at the book next to be read.

_'A Tale of Bonds: A Recollection of The Fell Dragon Anankos_'

Her eyes widened, and Sothis jumped as she felt hope through their bond.


	2. Eyes Wide And Glassy-Eyed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...Better late than never...?
> 
> Sorry, i had to re-write this so much, and even now i'm not happy with it. Plus, i had other stories and obligations and...yeah...GG real life, you truly are the final boss.

_It is within your very soul that I exist._

She’d had the faintest of blushes and a small smile when that was said.

_Our love is all that matters, not a ring._

How she missed those words, the warmth behind them, the heat that seeped into her cheeks as she smiled a little more. As she held hands with her goddess, her wife, and placed the ring on her own finger – her left hand, to be exact, for Sothis ever so liked her left hand compared to her right. Less calloused, she’d say, less…war-marked. Less scarred by time and malice…the hand she’d never held a sword in.

The hand she channelled her magic through, searing hot or freezing cold, thrumming with lightning or pulsing with healing.

The hand she extended to her students, before she’d killed some of them on the opposite side of a stupid war with her right; a hand in peace, the right for war.

A hand she loved more than she thought she could love anything.

_The two of us are one, for now and ever. I hope you are aware of that._

How long ago was that said to her? How long ago, between one war and the next and the next and _the next_? How long, after the end and before the End? Too long, much too long, and far too often has she wished to hear those words again.

_In sickness and in health, and come what may, I shall be deep within your heart._

She isn’t a talker, but with your wife being a part of your very soul, able to determine your muddled thoughts and feelings as easily as if they were her own, what’s the point? Her mouth forgot how to work after about the first eighty years of…solitude. In that Tower, in the Goddess Tower, as Fodlan rotted and wars started and ended; as her previous students came to her, begged her aid – it tore her apart something fierce to turn them down. No more war, she was tired of fighting no matter how good she was at it.

She isn’t a talker, but sometimes she wished she was. Just to say ‘I love you’ to her wife that proclaimed it so to her every morning. Just to say ‘thank you for being there’. She couldn’t speak anymore, gnarled hisses and gasps all that remained of her deteriorated vocal chords; but Sothis could, and assuaged her fears whenever they came into being with a simple kiss to the forehead and a hand holding hers – her left hand, because the ring was there, the symbol of their eternal love was there.

_The day you die, I’ll follow you. We shall journey as one until the end of time._

She isn’t a talker, but if she was…she’d be swearing up a storm so badly Sothis would be blushing – tips of her ears to her feet, a deep lobster red…kind of like what was hovering out of the corner of her eye, actually.

Byleth’s head felt like cotton, like fire and acid and nothingness all at once. Her vision was swimming, shady and hesitant to show her any less than three of anything she gazed at. Above her there was nothing but green, trees she guessed, and of course that odd shade of red hovering about just outside of her vision. Was that a splotch of white, too? It looked long, flowy. Hair, maybe? Did she botch it and travel back to a time when Edelgard was in the Academy? Byleth hoped not; no matter what she thought of her students – and those thought were fleeting with her age – she was not looking forward to dealing with the ‘obvious’ crush Edelgard had on her. And the political manoeuvring, and the eventual backstabbing and murder plots.

“Of all the things we could have _done_!”

_‘I agree’_, and she did. She really, _really_ did. What, exactly, they had done was beyond her – messing with time was Sothis’ field of expertise, not Byleth’s, but by all deities in existence did she wish she knew. Because time travel or not, you were _not_ supposed to be able to smell a colour or touch letters of the alphabet! When using Divine Pulse before she’d never felt anything aside from a nausea she’s long since learned to ignore – never has Byleth managed to feel the word blue! Or see the taste of an apple! Whatever they’d done…it had backfired somehow.

“I mean, honestly!” Sothis threw her hands into the air in exasperation, a shared feeling between them that the diminutive goddess expressed with a sour look. “This little venture of ours threw us further back than we intended!”

_‘Truly? How far back?’_ she wondered, but the goddess just shook her head. Good that she could see that, but then again when it came to seeing Sothis she could be blind and still watch her. Their bond, strong as it was, transcended death; why not sight?

“I do not-”

Her eyes were still triplicate in vision, and her head was banging with an ache she’d be feeling for days, but the rough voice from the other side of the clearing was unhindered by any form of disability she may be under; clear as day.

“You two! How did you get in here!?”

_‘two?’_

“They cannot see me,” Sothis confirmed; “Probably talking to the person next to him. As well as you, I imagine.”

Her vision was getting darker, but her ears still worked.

“Remain where you are!”

“I will be by your side as always. When you awaken I shall be there.” A hand brushed a lock of hair from her face and she closed her eyes willingly, heeding the call of sleep.

So, she slept.

“Oh…oh this is _not_ good, something is…very wrong.”

Ah, Byleth will find out after she sleeps. It’s been a long…life, and this little venture of theirs has ruined any chances of her being anything close to normal. She might take after Sothis; sleep for a few dozen centuries or so. It sounded appealing.

“what!?” That was a cry of alarm, and it almost had Byleth opening her eyes, but in the end her wife was smart – she could feel worry course through their bond, but at the same time it was not enough to make her worry. She was ever so tired, and noises were beginning to fade into the background; touch was fading fast, too, but she still felt someone gently lift her over a shoulder. Was she being carted off to an infirmary, or a ward of some sort?

She could hear shouting, now.

She was so close to sleep, so close.

“What are you – _unhand me_!”

Fear. Confusion. Distrust. Fear. Confusion. _Fear_.

Sothis was feeling fear. Her Sothis, her wife, her everything, was scared. She’d never felt scared. Uneasy, annoyed, in love, happy? Yes. Hate, sadness, longing, anger? Yes.

Never had she felt fear in all their time together; and Byleth had hoped to keep it that way, to keep her from feeling one of the basest of human emotions. She’d sworn it wouldn’t happen, she’d bring the Ashen Demon she used to be from way back when out again if she had to; wading through fields of fire, screams of the dead and dying suffusing the air around her, blood trickling down her body like water, eyes wide and empty of feeling.

For Sothis she’d be that demon.

Her eyes snapped wide, her hands pressed down on the shoulder of the person carrying her, shoving them to the ground; her vision had cleared, her hearing was normal, her heart was pumping and her left hand was afire with holy flames. Her right? Clutching the Sword of The Creator, holding it to the person’s throat.

She ignored the squeal of pain from her now-captive, and locked eyes with the red man with Sothis in his grip.

She couldn’t talk, couldn’t demand that he let her go, but he could understand when the sword in her hand started cutting through her captive’s neck, couldn’t he? Surely, he’d know what she wants by then. What if she made some gestures with her hand? No, that wouldn’t work, she needed her hand encased in the holy fires they were to keep him from risking a life for Sothis’ life. She’d rather melt him that risk Sothis, so that was out of the equation.

He saw something in her empty eyes, then. He must have, because he cautiously let go of Sothis – of course, the progenitor didn’t waste time in sprinting over to her, huddling behind her and placing her forehead against Byleth’s rigid back.

In return, Byleth raised the weapon from her captive’s neck; not enough to not be labelled a threat, but enough that she wouldn’t slip and slit them wide open.

The man raised two hands, cautiously mind you, in a placating gesture. “I…there’s no need to get violent here, alright? Would you mind telling me who you two are?”

Sothis, bitingly as she was known to do, scathed the man. “Oh, so with a sword to someone’s throat is when you resort to non-violence?” Byleth could feel little hands clutching the back of her jacket as a safety net, but Sothis’ voice was as waspish as ever. “We have just arrived here from afar, and we know not much of this new world we find ourselves in. A welcoming guest indeed.”

To the man’s credit he visibly winced. “I’m…deeply sorry about that. We just got someone back from a bad situation and…well, I was riding high from a fight, I suppose.”

Sothis lifted a single eyebrow and levelled a question at Byleth. _‘Should we trust him? He did seem rather tense…’_

Byleth thought it over for a few seconds before agreeing. She was The Ashen Demon right now, but she could take that away like a cheap mask whenever she wanted to – no one has to die for a misunderstanding after all.

Sothis, at her mental prodding, huffed out something in Nabetean before stomping her way around Byleth’s form; her sword hadn’t wavered from its poise above her captive’s neck, but her eyes did soften and her grip did slacken. It was the best he was going to get.

“I am Sothis Eisner, Goddess of Time, The Beginning.” Her casual introduction had stupefied the man, who’s jaw was hanging wide open. Sothis continued, waving a hand in Byleth’s general direction and infecting much more warmth into her voice when she spoke. “This is my wife, Byleth Eisner, The Ashen Demon, Progenitor Incarnate, The End.”

In a daze, he replied; “My name is Ryoma, Prince of Hoshido…” There was silence for a good ten seconds before the man coughed into a hand and pointed Byleth’s way. “Can’t she introduce herself?”

Sothis shot Ryoma a dirty look, but replied nevertheless. “_No_, for she is mute; not of her own accord, of course.” A sigh rippled through the Goddess’s small frame. “We do not need to speak to communicate, you see, and so her voice over eons has grown silent with disuse.”

“Ah…”

Sothis scoffed, tutted, and spun around on her heel to bring herself back to Byleth’s side – _where she should be_, Byleth thinks, and the little agreeing hum at the back of her mind tells her Sothis agrees with her. With little fanfare she drops her captive onto the ground and spins on her heel as well, the Sword of The Creator no longer needed and vanishing into small motes of light – the holy fire still burned in her hand, but more for Sothis’ benefit that anything. It was quite cold outside, after all. with her now free right hand she grasped Sothis’ left, and with little time to waste both began walking towards what looked like a city, about two or three minutes away from them.

Ryoma and the ex-captive locked eyes with each other before sprinting after them; they were headed to the castle, and if the small girl was right and these two were gods in human flesh…things could go badly. Gods tended to be a misnomer for ‘dragon’ after al, creatures so powerful they were said to shape the very earth around them for amusement.

Dragons they developed weapons to kill, dragons that had their bones scoured from their bodies to produce legendary weapons.

Like the Yatogami…

He thought of the Dragon statue in the courtyard and blanched, running with double the effort after them.

Things could go _really_ badly.

Corrin just wanted to know what the _hell_ was going on.


End file.
